Amanda Forbes/The Lantern
“Objects of Wonder from The Ohio State University” showcases many of the school’s treasured items.
Jesse Owens’ 1936 Olympic medals; Archie Griffin’s 1974 Heisman trophy; an M.C. Escher 1944 lithograph; a first edition of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.” Many items from OSU’s collection are now on display at the “Objects of Wonder from The Ohio State University” exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art.
“How our world is known [is] in objects,” said Melissa Wolfe, associate curator for the CMA and lead curator for the exhibit. “That’s how we understand our world, that’s how we structure it, that’s how we record our world.”
“Objects of Wonder” displays items borrowed from 34 different departments and compilations housed at OSU. More than 700 items are on loan from collections such as the Historic Costume and Textiles Collection to lesser-known assortments from the Museum of Biological Diversity.
Geoff Smith, professor and head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, said this exhibit is important because it is indicative of the resources available to OSU students.
“I hope they appreciate the many people at OSU who have developed these collections over the years and have done so much for the future of scholarship and the growth of knowledge,” Smith said in an e-mail. He said his department provided CMA with a list of what it thought was important to be displayed.
“We chose rare and unique books, manuscripts and artifacts that distinguish our collections,” Smith said. The items Smith felt were of particular note were the Darwin book and a 1619 printing of William Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” an item Wolfe said stunned a recent group of OSU theater department students. Wolfe said their reaction is exactly what she is aiming for in this exhibit.
“There’s an object in the show that will fascinate someone,” Wolfe said. “I wanted it really to be open for someone to say ‘Oh my God that’s so cool!'”
The display is divided into six themes: progress and protest; discover and explore; reveal and document; analyze and work; invent and inspire; and excel and define. Some of the more notable items on show are unpublished photographs of Marilyn Monroe taken by OSU graduate Earl Wilson, a 150 million-year-old fossilized horseshoe crab, Woody Hayes’ whistle and projector, an iron meteorite estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, an original Charles Schulz “Peanuts” comic strip and an authentic “Star Trek” manuscript. The diversity of the items is something Wolfe said makes the objects even more special.
The exhibit is designed to provoke the audience to analyze objects in context with the objects around them, Wolfe said. “So there’s a corset, which, when you think of [it] one way when it’s in the costume collection and it’s with all these women’s clothing … but I put it in a section that’s about work. So it’s with all these machines and you sort of then realize it’s a machine. It does a job. It works hard and there’s machinery to it,” Wolfe said.
Jenny Robb, assistant professor and associate curator for the Cartoon Research Library, said these objects are important to future generations.
“Students pass by our door every day without realizing what wonderful treasures we have inside,” Robb said in an e-mail. “This exhibit provides an excellent opportunity for the OSU and Columbus community to see the wide variety of unique items that Ohio State is committed to preserving for future generations.”
Although they are on exhibit at CMA, all of these items are available for students to see on campus, by appointment.
“Because we are a special collection, our stacks are closed,” Robb said. “But we will be happy to bring out any item for viewing in our reading room.”
Smith reiterated that sentiment.
“These are library materials that exist for the research needs of OSU’s faculty and students,” Smith said.
For now, however, Wolfe said anyone with a Buck ID is welcome to view the exhibit for free and is positive everyone will find something of interest.
“I like the show because, on one hand, you can go through and it’s really quite serious about the validity and the importance of objects … but they’re also quirky,” Wolfe said. “If you walk through and don’t laugh at something, then I think you’re missing a part of it.”
The Columbus Museum of Art is at 480 E. Broad St. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
“Objects of Wonder” will be on display until Jan. 11.
Amanda Forbes can be reached at [email protected].
